SpaceXAI loses bid to dismiss NAACP lawsuit over air pollution

A federal judge in Mississippi let the Clean Air Act case over gas turbines powering Musk's Memphis-area AI data centers move forward SpaceXAI wanted the NAACP’s air pollution lawsuit thrown out before it got going. A federal judge in Mississippi declined. In an opinion released late Friday, US District Judge Debra Brown denied the motion to dismiss filed by SpaceXAI, the AI division of Elon Musk’s aerospace and defense tech conglomerate. The Clean Air Act case now proceeds in federal court. What the NAACP is alleging The core claim is simple. SpaceXAI allegedly used gas-fired combustion turbines to power its massive AI data centers in Greater Memphis without the federal permits and pollution controls the Clean Air Act requires. The suit targets between 27 and 69 natural gas turbines at the Colossus Gas Plant in Southaven, Mississippi. That plant supplies electricity to Colossus 2, the SpaceXAI data center across the state line in Memphis, Tennessee. According to the allegations, potential annual emissions could include between 1,700 and 5,000 tons of nitrogen oxides. The list also includes hundreds of tons of particulate matter and dozens of tons of formaldehyde. The NAACP filed t...